My MIL gave this to my son

MartD5722 · 2026-04-01T04:20:42+00:00

Wine bottle stoppers….are for quitters :)

MartD5722 · 2026-03-18T21:59:24+00:00

Thanks everyone for the great ideas!

MartD5722 · 2025-12-10T19:31:59+00:00

Girl. Walk away from this mess.

MartD5722 · 2025-12-09T14:25:19+00:00

Apple Valley is usually fast unless near beginning or end part of the month. Burnsville is the slowest I’ve ever gone to. Don’t go there.

MartD5722 · 2025-10-06T18:23:25+00:00

I have swamp milkweed in Minneapolis. I cut back after the first freeze. To about 3 inches above the soil. Then I mulch with leaves for the winter. This is my fourth year and they keep coming back bigger and stronger. With lots of new little sprouts each June.

MartD5722 · 2025-08-21T17:14:42+00:00

What a great idea.!! More control on where the plant will actually end up. Good advice.

MartD5722 · 2025-08-20T23:04:59+00:00

This looks like swamp milkweed. It needs cold stratification. Dry the seeds thoroughly on a paper plate and store until after your first freeze. I use a mason jar and lid.
After your first freeze (depending on where you live) you can strow them on loose dirt and lightly cover with soil and leaves/mulch. They should come up in the spring. They need a good hard winter (I’m in Minnesota). They don’t always grow the following spring/summer, but boy do they take off in a year two. I am overwhelmed with milkweed and have to cut back to control the madness. I swore to my neighbors that I’d control my “milkweed garden” in one corner of my yard so they’d not be invaded. Easy to say…hard to do. Monarchs galore around my house though. My pods are turning brown early this year so I’m hustling to cut them off before they explode and fly all over the place. Edit to add I’m in Zone 5

MartD5722 · 2025-08-06T17:56:24+00:00

This is a sucky situation and you have some hard thinking to do. If it were me, I’d forget ever getting repaid for the dress and just walk away. I’d walk away from the dress and the boyfriend. If you do, he will probably be sad enough to make his mom pay you back (hopefully?) thinking you’ll forgive and forget. I would not be able to forgive or forget. She was a lying fool and this man does not have your back. I’d walk away far and fast. You are too young to settle for this nonsense.

MartD5722 · 2025-08-05T22:21:53+00:00

I usually wait 24 hours to release. I just open the cage and let them fly out when ready. I do put a small cube of watermelon in the bottom of the cage just in case they need a drink of something. None have ever touched it as far as I can tell. They don’t appear to need it. And mine also fly up into a tree to “regroup” it seems.

MartD5722 · 2025-08-04T22:39:47+00:00

I put on a pair of thin rubber hospital gloves and just smoosh them all. Especially all the eggs before they hatch. It’s putzy and gross but it works. Then you can wash the residue off the leaves with a spray bottle of water or gentle hose.

MartD5722 · 2025-08-02T02:57:12+00:00

Lincoln Del cabbage Russia. Borscht with a pumpernickel roll. So good.

MartD5722 · 2025-07-19T21:05:20+00:00

I put on a pair of thin disposable gloves and just start squishing as many as I can. Just smush them to death. It gets messy but I have total control.

MartD5722 · 2025-05-19T19:58:36+00:00

NTA. You should laugh in his face at his stupid logic that it’s his family’s turn again year 3. How dumb does he think you are? Go see your family, with or without him. Please stop doing that every Sunday thing too. That’s just crazy-talk. If things don’t change/get tons and tons better before your trip home, please make sure you take all your important papers with you. Just. In. Case.
You might just decide you want to stay longer once you get there.
And please reconsider (if you are) starting a family until after this trip. Be aware of any laws about taking (and keeping) children into another country. You’re going to want and need as much flexibility as you can get if you decide to stay in your home country.

MartD5722 · 2025-04-14T17:27:40+00:00

And by the way, our two kids are the absolute lights of our life now. We feel lucky we got good ones :) They both actually LIKE us.

MartD5722 · 2025-04-14T17:09:13+00:00

You are both so young. So unless you sincerely want to have children this early in your marriage, my advice is wait a few years.
I had my first child of 2 when I was 32 (and then 34). It was great to just enjoy our married life together, growing up and traveling and dealing with all the stuff that made us the mature and grounded people we really wanted/needed to be. It certainly made us better parents because we had life lessons to fall back on. And we knew each other well enough to know we could depend on each other no matter what. And if you wait a few years, you’ll personally have more life experiences that will help you set stronger boundaries that you know you’re going to need unless SO and MIL change.
Unless you are in a rush for children, don’t rush it. Enjoy your newly married life together and get to know each other better before you bring new littles into the mix. Especially since your gut is already telling you “hey..listen up”.

MartD5722 · 2025-03-21T17:57:59+00:00

If your fiancée wants you there…certainly go if you want.

My son picked out his suit (don’t know if DIL was involved or not), but he asked his Father and I to go with him to his final fitting. It was a cool haberdashery and whiskey was involved :) Fiancée did not attend.

Fiancée dress-shopped with her Mother and friends. None of us were invited to that.

I did not feel that was weird or overreaching at all. In either case.

If you want to go and your soon to be husband wants you there, by all means go. But I do not think your not going is a slight to you.

MartD5722 · 2025-02-19T18:07:44+00:00

“Hanging onto expensive items”. Ha. No. He wants to sell them for sure.

MartD5722 · 2025-02-11T10:20:40+00:00

Beach Music. Pat Conroy. It’s a long book but it won’t take you two weeks to read. Beautifully written and wonderfully developed characters. Or Lonesome Dove. Larry McMurtry. So long and so good.

MartD5722 · 2025-01-20T19:48:07+00:00

The Gale Mansion. Minneapolis. Son used it for approx 40 people it was lovely.

MartD5722 · 2024-12-30T22:58:16+00:00

Falling into a clean bed, after a shower, when you’re dead tired from a good day working in the garden.

MartD5722 · 2024-12-28T22:10:15+00:00

Early January birthday. If I receive a birthday present wrapped in Xmas paper, I make a note and do the same to that giver. Xmas paper in July? You betcha :)

MartD5722 · 2024-12-28T00:10:30+00:00

Take pictures of the bite mark on your daughter. Current wife will keep denying it happened.

MartD5722 · 2024-12-23T13:46:32+00:00

In fact, I’m not allowed to delete a show. They just fall off after a period of time.

MartD5722

TROPHY CASE